It’s particularly impressive to me because its focus is to improve public schools, and is not allied with private groups that want to create charters, which is the focus of a similarly named parents group in Los Angeles.

All I know about the group is what the newspaper article says. It sounds like it’s a completely independent group, which may make it difficult to sustain over the long-term. I spent nineteen years as an organizer working to build “organizations of organizations” for a number of reasons, including because of the long-term problems involved in creating new groups. Bringing like-minded organizations together that have been around for awhile provides financial stability and relationship “glue” that can help with sustainability.

But, whatever their situation is, I hope the Parents Union has success!

The Harlem Children’s Zone is the most well-known example of this kind of school in the U.S.

I think community schools can be a great benefit to the local community. I also believe that they can be an even greater benefit if they do two things differently from how they usually operate. One, if they look at parents more as partners instead of clients and, two, if they work more closely with multiple local community groups. I’ve written about this issue in an earlier post.

There may be an effort to create a school like this in Sacramento as part of a nation-wide effort to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone. I’ve had conversations with some people who are involved, and they seem open to looking at these two issues and making them a priority in what happens locally. It’ll be interesting to see what develops.

Based on what I know about what is going on there (which is not a whole lot — I’m trying to find out more, and would love to get more thoughts from readers in the comment section of this post), I have mixed feelings about this plan.

On one hand, yes, I think it’s good for parents to have more power in school decision-making. One problem in schools is that school staff sometimes feel that power is a finite “pie” and that if parents get some power, that means staff have less. In fact, the more power parents get, the more possibilities and opportunities are created, and the “pie” gets bigger.

On the other hand, based on the articles (correct me if my impression is incorrect), parents are getting the power to do just one thing — if 51% of them in one of thirty schools signs a petition, then an outside operator can come in and turn it into a charter. It’s part of a controversial plan the District announced earlier to turn these thirty schools into private charters. It also sounds like the District may not be doing this in collaboration with teachers and administrators, and, in fact, may not even be working with parent groups on this program — just with charter school operators.

I can’t help but wonder if the District might be doing this to gain a little more political cover for what might be a hasty and unwise move to try to privatize a good number of schools. Why not work with parents and multiple groups with whom they’re affiliated (along with teachers and administrators) on exploring various ways parents can have more power in school-site decision-making, and not just on the charter question?

I can understand a desire to try something like this out at a small number of schools first to work out the “kinks,” but it seems to me if you want true parent engagement, doing something as limited as this in such a controversial context may not be the way to go.

Community organizing is one of the four parent engagement strategies we outline in our book. A recent study by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform highlights its benefits for students, families,and schools.

One of the chapters in our book highlights the work of the Industrial Areas Foundation in developing Alliance Schools in Texas. The IAF, as far as I can tell, were the first to begin talking about the difference between parent involvement and engagement almost twenty years ago.

Unfortunately, at least as far as the article describes the programs in various school districts (and I understand that they might not be entirely accurate), it appears that they are missing huge opportunities. They all seem to be bringing parents in to train them on what the districts want to train them on and talk about the topics they want them to talk about it. There is no indication that they are asking what the parents want to do or learn.

The TIME article itself has a particularly condescending comment:

“Of course, there’s no guarantee that the people who need these programs the most will actually take advantage of them — you can’t force parents to care, no matter how many free classes you offer.”

Come on, just because parents who might be facing huge time, economic, family, and health challenges don’t want to come to a meeting to talk about what the district wants them to talk about doesn’t mean they don’t care!

Plus, the final sentence from a Harvard researcher demonstrates what a huge disconnect there is between “parent involvement” (which I would use to describe these types of academies) and “parent engagement” (which I would use to describe what Elisa Gonzalez has done at our high school’s Parent University by asking parents what they wanted to learn about and building the curriculum with them):

“Family engagement is a shared, reciprocal partnership between educators and parents,” she says. “It’s a two-way conversation between home and school.”

Yes, exactly, a conversation. Often, these types of parent academies tend to be more a one-way “communication” to parents as opposed to a two-way “conversation.” That doesn’t make them bad — any kind of further parent connection can help students.

So much more could be possible, though. And that makes them lost opportunities, too.

“In effect, schools would become de facto community centres for whole families, offering programs to help parents with their most pressing needs – from finding work and getting fit to understanding Facebook and navigating the school system.”

It sounds good. My concern, though, is that — based on what the article says — they’re basing what they do on responses to written surveys instead of upon individual conversations. Written surveys are never good barometers of genuine interest, nor can they be used to identify potential leaders who have energy to “carry the ball” and who have a “following” in the community.

Community organizers know that writtens surveys are good for one thing — to be excuses to initiate conversations with people. The real “meat” occurs in the listening and talking.

Without that kind of interaction, whatever is created can become a typical social service program where well-intentioned school staff provide services to parents, which might or might not be their priority community concerns. Leaders are not developed, and it can easily peter out.

However, I certainly know enough to recognized that the article might not be giving an accurate impression of the parent academy, and the school district might very well be using other tactics to connect to parents besides a written survey.

“…challenges those who question whether low-income parents as a group care about their children’s education. All too often, Renee writes, it’s not a lack of caring but a community-wide sense that inequities in the system that have been perpetuated for generations will not change.”

I’m not sure how helpful the resource is (though I did learn about the California Parent Center through it), but it never hurts to be able to point to some official wording supporting what you want to do if you’re pushing to connect schools and families.

The Industrial Areas Foundation began making the distinction between parent “involvement” and parent “engagement” during its community organizing efforts in schools during the 1990’s, and Professor Dennis Shirley wrote about it in his 1997 book Community Organizing For Urban School Reform. Even though a chapter in our book focuses on the IAF’s work (I was an IAF organizer for the majority of my nineteen year organizing career), I’d encourage people to read Professor Shirley’s book.

It particularly talks about their “Parent University.” It’s unclear, though, how much parents participating in developing its content. One of the main things, I think, that makes the “Parent University” at our school more “engagement” than “involvement” is that Elisa Gonzalez, its coordinator, made sure that parents determined what they wanted to learn, and then our school and the University of California at Davis worked with them to help deliver the content.

I recognize that going to college is not necessarily the best choice for everybody. However, I also think it’s important for students — both our English Language Learners and those in the “mainstream” to be knowledgeable about college options so they can make a decision with all the needed information.

In the majority of our home visits to parents, we’ve found that parents might theoretically be interested in having their children attend college, but are very uncertain about many of the “how’s” — tests that need to be taken, ways to make it financially feasible, etc. Many also have concerns about their kids going to a school far way, and the idea of them doing it for four or five years “when we need money now.” Finally, since many ELL’s don’t pass the English portion of the California High School Exit Exam, they don’t end-up with a high-school diploma, and don’t necessarily believe that college is still an option (it is, especially with our local Community College). All these issues are understandable, given that college is outside the experience of so many of our families.

Given these issues, I’ve begun meeting with Leticia Gallardo, an exceptional counselor at our school, to develop a plan to get our students and their families considering these questions now — when they’re in the ninth-grade — and not wait til later in their school career. It’s a simple one, and I’d be interested in getting feedback and other suggestions from readers about their own experiences with this issue.

I wanted to do something that could be easily integrated in our classes, be done over the course of the school year, and not take up too much time — a handful of class periods. Here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

In the next week or two, have students develop questions they have about college. In addition, part of the assignment will be to have them get questions from their parents, too.

Thirdly, students would write about the types of careers they might want to consider going into and ask their parents to share their own thoughts about what they might want their kids to do. In home visits, often parents seem surprised at this question and appear to have never thought about it before.

After that, students will research the different careers and the kind of formal education that would be required in order to enter them. The Best Websites For Students Exploring Jobs & Careers is a good source for this kind of information. Again, they would write up what they learned, share it with their parents, and get a response from them.

We’d end-up with a visit to a local four-year university, which would include separate orientations for students and parents.

What do you think? What might be missing? How could we make it better — without increasing the time commitment by much more?

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